The Sword of Shannara

I absolutely adored this book and I don't know why people hate on it so much. Yes it is very tropey and has several scenes from Lord of the Rings but it's not as bad as I expected. In several way I think it's better than Lord of the Rings.

Before you throw your phone, I'm not saying this book is better but there are 2 categories that Brooks absolutely does better than Tolkien.

1) Prose. The prime issue with people who don't like Tolkien is that his prose is too outdated mixed with slow storytelling. Brooks' prose is actually very simple and easy to follow. His story can be slow but he throws in a good action sequence every once in awhile to keep you engaged, which brings me to my next one...

2) Action. My personal biggest issue with Tolkien is that he's not very good at writing action scenes. When I read the book I just imagined the movie scenes most of the time which in some ways robs me of my experience with Tolkien but in some ways makes it way better. Brooks is significantly better at action scenes but he is by no means better than what we have today. Which is a great thing that we can have improvement from a book written almost 50 years ago.

What makes Tolkien better is his character development and world building. Although Brooks does a wonderful job with character development as well as world building, I just don't love it as much as Middle Earth.
I also really enjoyed the creativity of the monsters as well but once again, not better than Tolkien.

Brooks also used the word “awesome” about 30 times which I've noticed a lot of old books use this word. I think it's a little childish in adult books to be used to this extreme. He desperately should have consulted a thesaurus.

All in all I very much recommend this book to people who like Tolkien tropes but don't like his prose or to people who just want more of the same.